Marine Jiu-jitsu sucks

My friend, long time martial artist and GI, just got out of the marines and we started training together. He mentioned how he was one of the best in their combatives class, and only the instructor could tap him out. I was like okay let me see how your grappling is, you better be able to beat me because I've only done about 3 months of it. To quote someone, my ground game is weaker than Stephen Hawking's. So we rolled, and I steamrolled him, folded his limbs like a goddamn chinaman on crack on laundry day. He has 20 lbs on me also.

I guess it's part of their plan that they make marines think they're king ****, otherwise they wont be too willing to run in front of bullets.

From what I understand, the hand-to-hand game in the military is very limited and mainly focused on morale-boosting and being able to gain enough control to have your buddy shoot him or to get away to shoot him or something. The members who are in the armed forces now could probably tell you better than me, though.

The MCMAP doesn't focus on grappling like the Army Combatives. MCMAP is more oriented towards a weapons based art. Meaning, create distance to draw your weapon and use it. They have the unarmed stuff also, but again, it's to give yourslef an opening for weapons use (if available). Their take on the grappling is to teach the Marines enough to defend against it and to regain there feet or a knee to continue the fight (and access a weapon if it's available).

At least this is the gist of it I got from the SNCOIC of the MACE at Quantico and one of the guys that helped develop it. :)

The amount of time a Soldier or Marine actually spends on combatives in small, so assuming they don't train in martial arts on their own, the odds are that anybody with a few months of regular BJJ training could tap them out. The point is that the primary function of combatives in military training is to build an aggressive mentality that will allow them to their jobs better.

I rolled with a guy the other night fresh out of the marines. I was trying to go slow to let him get the feel and he was going crazy, he got back control and was trying to choke me and was pulling on my nose and face practically trying to use his fingers to control my face to get the choke in. I had to tell him to calm down and not do that because of 1) safety of your training partner, 2) revenge sucks. I got him off and did an outside leg reap from the knee and obtained mount. He then tried hitting some nerve in my leg a bunch of time. Had to stop him and explain again that we aren't striking in this class. There are other classes you can do that in but you need to learn some basics first. The fact is, if this was a real fight, while he was attacking my knee while I was in mount, I could have just landed brutal elbows on him. It's something else I tried to explain to him as well. Position first, and understanding if you go flailing your arms out in a bad position, someone is going to take that gifts and break it for you.

After that, he told me that in the Marines(his unit, not indicative of all the Marines) they would be on their knees back to back and when turn around and start rolling and just go at it.

After hearing this my personal opinion is that they probably did the same thing that I did when I was in basic training in the army...crappling. Before if get any crap(no pun intended) about that comment understand what Feedback talked about. You put a crappler who thinks he/she can grapple against someone who actually can, bad things happen. I understand that the focus of the military is not going to be grappling and that you have guns and weapons on the battlefield. My thing is if you are going to teach it, TEACH IT RIGHT! Stop giving these guys a false sense of skill with "t3h cr@ppl3".

This one is directed more to the ones who teach these programs in the military. I understand how a lot of military classes are taught and how the instructors of these classes are taught. Some instructor comes in, goes over the material, shows you how to instruct the class, says you can know give the class, you go out and give the class. Not a comprehensive list of how it's done, just the jist. The problem is that it seems that the military is doing the same thing with martial arts and you just can't do that. It takes hard training and time and not a 40 credit hour class at the local military school o' combat.